Hogwarts 1910 Spells Out of School
by Tannhaeuser
Summary: Set eighty years before Harry Potter, this story follows the conflict between the young fops of Gryffindor in love and war with the "bluestockings with lungs of bronze" of Ravenclaw House. Written in the style of H. H. Munro, AKA "Saki" .


Hogwarts 1910 SPELLS OUT OF SCHOOL

**Hogwarts 1910 ****S****PELLS ****O****UT OF ****S****CHOOL******

A HARRY POTTER FAN-FICTION

PART I.

_The brazen monster had struck him dead._— JULIAN SERMET, _THE ROSAMONDE_

"Confund that Urfried Zernebock!" growled Reggie Weasley to Aurelian Orphrey, punching his pillow savagely. "If I thought I could get away with it, I would hex her with a permanent Silencing charm."

"I doubt if any wizard living could hex Urfried into silence," remarked Aurelian, judicially. "A syndicate of Circe, Tiresias, and Apollonius of Tyana _might_ have managed it, with effort, but no single living wizard, certainly. She is a Ravenclaw, after all, and you know what that means—a bluestocking with lungs of bronze."

"Here, I say, I bar that. Angela Britomart is a Ravenclaw, and she's as right as a new broom. I mean, I know she's brainy and all that, and she has got a bit of a temper…"

"My dear lad, a sword has a temper, but Angela has a temper with its own sword. A Polymagus who insists on keeping her hair the colour of a Phoenix in a Neapolitan sunset is like a man who insists on maintaining his own private Vesuvius." Aurelian bestowed a complacent smile on the mirror as he brushed out his own auburn mane. He knew of what he spoke.

"She says she _likes_ red hair," said Reggie huskily, blushing to his own carroty roots.

"Ah! Startling new evidence has come to light, m'lud, which lays an entirely new complexion on the case. She _likes_ red hair. Angela is obviously a girl of much discernment and taste. But am I to gather that the Zernebock has diminished Angela's appreciation of your own Titianesque locks?"

"Well, you know how Urfried is. Whenever she catches a chap bending, the first thing she does is dash to inform his friends. She calls it being brutally honest."

"People who speak of 'brutal honesty,'" Aurelian interrupted indignantly, "are guilty of the grossest dishonesty toward the brutes. Horklumps, perhaps, are honest, and Flobberworms forthright, which is why Horklumps and Flobberworms are of interest only as cures for acute insomnia. But what injustice to the velvety hypocrisy of the Kneazle with a view to a bowl of cream! What an insult to the ingenious deceit of the Lethifold luring wizards into its fatal embrace! What injury to the cunning of the Kelpie bearing unwary Muggles to a watery death! The very Dugbog that reposes like a rotting log in the swamp does so only to deceive its simple-minded prey—whence, no doubt, the rustic proverb, 'Let sleeping Dugbogs lie.'"

"It strikes me that not only the Dugbogs are rotting. Anyhow, Angela had invited me to some ghastly poetry recital or sackbut concert or something, and I told her I'd be delighted to go, only I'd got a detention with Professor Parandrus—which was perfectly true."

"Oh, yes," said Aurelian, climbing under the scarlet coverlet, "Rose St. Cyprian transfigured you into an Alsatian, and you bit him in the—"

"South Dungeon, that's right."

"But surely Angela wouldn't mind if Urfried told her you were a bit of a dog. Most girls seem to like it."

"I told her that myself. Only I didn't tell her that Rose was to share the detention with me. And, well—you know Rose. She's an awfully jolly girl. I'm completely keen on Angela, but I'll admit that I enjoyed that particular detention rather more than a sackbut recital. I don't know how the blighted Urfried found out about it, but the next time I saw Angela, she ticked me off as Clodius Malfoy would a cheeky House-elf—and there was Urfried right next to her, smirking like the House-Elf's mother-in-law."

"So Urfried admitted that she peached to La Britomart? Stooging the Keeper rather, that."

"Admitted? She swanked about it! Whenever she manages to ruin some poor wizard's reputation, she puts on more side than a Krup with three tails—"

"—excepting, of course, that the Krup generally wags its tales behind its _own_ back."

"Do you think, if I could get Urfried to tell me something about Angela—?"

"Say farewell forever to that golden dream. First off, though _les femmes Serdaigles_ speak daggers against each other, they will lose none, certainly not to a Gryffindor male. The slight breeze that played across your aching brow would be nothing to the cataclysm that would strike the Ravenclaw maid who broke the code. Secondarily, it is well known that your taste in girls inclines toward the Dresden shepherdess type, whereas Urfried is designed more upon the lines of the Leipsic monument. Urfried Zernebock is not so clever as she fancies herself, but she is quite clever enough to see through that rude stratagem. Sixth and lastly—and I say this as one who knows thee well and loves thee well—thou art a blithering ass who would be sure to muck it up."

"Here, I say!"

"Much better to wait for that just Providence that smiteth the presumptuous heathen to bring about the desired eruption. Thine eyes may yet see the delivery of Gryffindor. However, as mine eyes would not see the delivery of the milk, I bid thee put thy head in a bag. _Nox_."

PART II.

_  
How many women would do such a message?  
Alas, poor Proteus! Thou hast entertained  
A fox to be the shepherd of thy lambs!_  
— SHAKESPEARE, _THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA_

Red hair has been held a sign of treachery since ever Judas was painted in a panel. It must therefore be a matter of some pain to the chronicler to present no fewer than three of these ill-omened polls to the reader, who might, indeed, be forgiven for regarding them as an _embarras de rougesses_. Nevertheless, the student of History cannot allow mere verisimilitude to stand in the way of the bald, or rather, the hirsute fact; and as a matter of fact, this red sea of partings is readily susceptible of explanation. Keen observers had long suspected that the Sorting Hat, if it failed to divine any sort of preference in the student, simply sent the silvery-haired to Slytherin, the honey-brown to Hufflepuff, the raven-haired to Ravenclaw, and the ruddy to Gryffindor (hence the Slytherin catch-phrase, "those ruddy Gryffindors"); it was speculated that if ever a bald student came to Hogwarts, it would doubtless set him by himself on the dome of the Astronomy Tower. Aurelian and Reggie thus bore the Gryffindor scarlet as their birthright. Angela, as a Polymagus, had borne the oriflamme by right of conquest; since then, however, having given Reggie what is known in arcane lore as "the Push," she had reverted in a passion to the raven that marked her house naturally. Urfried's tar-coloured locks were, according to general opinion, rather less natural, deriving rather from potion than passion—though few cared to go so far as Aurelian, who always affirmed that her colour was four parts Giant Squid ink to one part of the blood of unbaptized infants—marking rather fanatical devotion to Ravenclaw than to heredity.

Urfried, making her usual evening eruption into the Library with as many "Don't mind me's" as she deemed necessary to draw all eyes to herself, was disconcerted to see Angela Britomart—across the room—in a cosy bay—apparently dreaming over a stack of gilded novelettes—with hair like a splash of Flammiferous Philtre on a flamingo. At Urfried's gasp (not unlike the explosion of a Zeppelin), the guilty figure started up, and fled with a tumbling armful of books behind the nearest shelf. Urfried was already bearing down upon her retreating prize, and steamed round the corner just in time to hear a hissing "Vocialtero!"—and to run afoul of Aurelian Orphrey.

"Ah…ah…good evening, Ur—Miss Zernebock." The usually unruffled Gryffindor seemed, in some disorder, to be trying to screen himself behind a teetering ziggurat of volumes with such titles as _My Gryffindor Lad, A Young Lion's Love,_ and _Godric's Kiss_.

"Mr. Orphrey! Why, I could have sworn I saw Angela Britomart run back here."

"I…I _think_ Miss Britomart has gone to hear _The Magic Flute_ in Hogsmeade this evening. Didn't she _tell_ you that? I mean, she told _me_ that, and why _wouldn't_ she tell her best friend?" Aurelian's voice took on rather a snappish tone, oddly reverberant for a lad of sixteen. That, however, may have been the result of the narrow corner he was in.

"Of course, she did _tell_ me that. Why, you have dropped one of your books! Allow me." With the grace of a well-drilled Erumpent Urfried retrieved the volume (_Heart Pressed By A Mane_) and replaced it under Aurelian's chin at the top of the pile. "I had no idea you had such a taste for sentimental literature, Mr. Orphrey."

"It's for a friend!" Urfried fancied her interlocutor had coloured violently.

"Indeed? Let me settle your collar for you; no, I really must insist. I do hope you don't mean Reggie Weasley. I hate to speak against any _friend_ of yours, but he really is rather an unsatisfactory person."

"Reggie—I mean, Mr. Weasley—I mean, _Reggie_ is NOT unsatisfactory! He explained all about that detention with Rose St. Cyprian, and it was absolutely innocent! You don't think he _wanted_ a detention, do you?" Aurelian stamped his foot pettishly.

"Oh, but he _is_, Mr. Orphrey. He may have explained away that detention—he is certainly a very glib speaker—but, you know," (Urfried's greenish eyes narrowed) "he is the most dreadful gossip— and all about us poor Ravenclaws, too! Why, do you know he told me …"

It is not the place of the historiographer to spread idle gossip, so we draw a veil over this painful discourse. Urfried was not a historiographer, though she was a Ravenclaw, and for all that it was forbid to reveal the secrets of her prison house, she did a tale unfold to harrow up Aurelian's soul, to freeze his young blood, to make his eyes like stars start from their spheres, and his knotted and combinéd locks to part and each particular ruddy hair to stand on end, like quills upon the fretful porpentine, finishing up triumphantly:

"…and do you know, he even told me about Angela, that her parents were so afraid that she would turn out a Squib, that they hired a special 'Idiot Teacher'—"

"THANK YOU FOR THE INFORMATION, MISS ZERNEBOCK!" Aurelian had the apoplectic appearance of a Plimpy that has swallowed a submarine mine and is just about to make the fact authoritatively known. "You may rely upon it, the next time I see Reginald Weasley, I shall have a word or two with him—and I fancy the whole school will hear about it!" He swept out of the Library, rather in the manner of the Grey Lady cutting the Bloody Baron after a particularly nasty supernatural tiff.

"—but the worst thing, _Mr. Orphrey_," simpered Urfried, with an Etruscan sneer on her rather post-Classical face, "is that he lets his Gryffindor friends wander about wearing blue and bronze ties. Oh, dear, Angela, of what use _was_ that teacher to you?"

PART III.

_  
Best not to rear the lion-cub in the city;  
But if 't is done, its ways must then be served._  
— ARISTOPHANES, _THE FROGS_

Angela's hair and mood, when she appeared in the Ravenclaw dormitory that night, were so inky-black that even Urfried Zernebock's most irresistible vocal assault was repelled; and the single speech she vouchsafed was a terse imprecation against carroty-headed wizards, so venomous that it would have been ruled out of order in the Borussian Zaubertag. Urfried contented herself with another entry in her diary complimenting herself on her cleverness.

It was subsequently remarked by more than one Ravenclaw that Angela's gaze at breakfast, prowling between the yet empty Gryffindor table and the door, was rather like that of a Nundoo deprived of his morning native, though Marcella Tyrwhitt's assertion that she distinctly saw a Hufflepuff First Year wither into ash when caught in its beam is probably mere exaggeration. It cannot be doubted, however, that when the Gryffindor line broke into the Great Hall, laughing and chattering, with Reggie Weasley and Aurelian Orphrey at its head, she rose from her place, marble-white and nails digging into her palms, and advanced upon them grimly like a militant Suffragette upon a recalcitrant Minister. Urfried followed hard upon her train, bent slightly forward, teeth bared and eyes glittering. Though her principles, she had often and loudly declared, were rigidly set against blood sports, she could recognize an exception. She had long desired to see this particular fox worried to death.

"_You!_" Considered as a curse, the syllable might ordinarily have seemed innocuous—but as pronounced by Angela Britomart, it seemed a candidate for the Fourth Unforgivable. Reggie Weasley shrunk back, with his jaw striking his collar, clinging to Aurelian's arm as a small child taken to the Zoo clings to its nurse when first confronted with the Hungarian Horntail. "You _arrogant_—egotistical—_twisted_—bloody-pelted—bloody-_minded_ TROLL of a Gryffindor! No, that's not fair—a _Troll_ would be more of a gentleman. You are some sort of vile, blasting, fungoid disease—a sort of creeping, red, scaly blight, that requires its own special wing in St. Mungo's and contracting which requires the entire ward to be incinerated after the patient has dissolved into a writhing, suppurated mass of sanguinary froth!"

Every pair of eyes in Hogwarts was fixed upon the scene. Hufflepuff and Slytherin First and Second Years elbowed their friends and heaved up contented sighs. A hearty breakfast, _and_ a show, _and_ no personal involvement—what greater magic has life to offer? They stuffed themselves with the sight, greedily, while it lasted. Already Professor Parandrus, the Gryffindor Head-of-House, was bustling forward to interrupt the best thing to happen at brekkers since Wilfred Diggory had eaten twenty-two currant buns and been sick all over the Herbology Master. The officious blighter!

Though Reggie Weasley, due to his friendship with the dangerous Aurelian, was the Transfigurations Master's pet whipping-boy, Professor Parandrus had yet no desire to lay bare the iniquities of his House—and his own inadequacy as its Head—so publicly. "Now, mmm, now, Miss Britomart," he dithered, fixing his cairngorm eyes on Angela, "This is hardly the way young, er, witches behave. I have no, er, hesitation in opining that a sufficient explanation can be provided to, erm, mitigate whatever offence may have been committed—unintentionally, I daresay—by, ah, Mr. Weasley."

The air seemed to crackle around Angela, as she turned her electric glare upon the wretched Gryffindor master. "Weasley?" she snarled. "WEASLEY? _WE-AS-LEY?_ Do you imagine I would waste my time on a mere blithering idiot like Reginald Weasley? I was addressing _that_ particular excrescence of the Underworld—Aurelian Orphrey!"

Professor Parandrus's "Eh?" and Reggie's "Crikey!" were both drowned like Hagen in the Wagnerian tidal-wave of Urfried's _"WHAT?"_ Aurelian, screwing a glass into his eye with a faint curve of his lips, took a step back and surveyed the ruins. Angela, like the Rhine, continued to boil over.

"This Krup cornered me after Ancient Runes yesterday, and begged me to go with him to hear 'The Magic Flute' in Hogsmeade yesterday evening. He suggested I lend him a Ravenclaw tie for the occasion, so that I mightn't 'compromise myself by being seen with a Gryffindor,' and he promised that he would meet me there and pay for my ticket. When I got to the theatre, I found—after having sat for at least a half-hour through a series of low Music-Hall turns—that the main feature of the performance was not to be Mozart, but 'Syd Stiggles and His Magical Nose-Flute!' I was obliged to watch the whole of this ghastly entertainment, wedged in between a greasy old fish-shop keeper and a fat and heliotrope-scented char-woman, who kept slapping my arm and shrieking, 'Eh, that wos a good 'un, wan't it, dearie?' By the time the revolting spectacle was over, the last carriage had departed for the Castle; so, being quite without the Sickles to pay for a taximeter-broom, I was obliged to walk back, ruining a good pair of shoes, blistering my feet, and narrowly escaping being gated by Mr. Ketch. And you come bleating to me about Weasleys!" She burst into an impressive torrent of weeping.

"Mr. Orphrey!" wambled the Professor, his mouth working as if he were chewing Bertie Botts Beans and had just discovered one tasting of colocynth, "How came you to do this? Chivalry, sir—chivalry is, er, the stamp of a true Gryffindor. I am, hem, inexpressibly shocked and grieved."

It cannot be denied that Professor Parandrus's shock and grief were sensibly diminished by his growing realization that here, at last, was his chance to catch out the lad customarily referred to by masters as "the unbearable Orphrey". So simple are pedagogues! Vengeance, commonly reputed sweet, had in Aurelian's case a vile habit of turning, like the Bertie Botts' Bean, suddenly colocynth-flavoured. "Have you anything to say for yourself, wretched boy?"

"Yes, sir," said Aurelian, "I have. You are always warning us against the dangers of moral contamination by associating with persons of dubious character, aren't you, sir?" (This was indeed one of Parandrus's favourite exhortations to his House, although the dubious character he generally had in mind was Aurelian Orphrey's.) "And—it is not a pleasant thing to have to say, sir—I was warned against Miss Britomart, and indeed against the whole of Ravenclaw House, by someone, sir, who is in a position to know."

Urfried snorted. "I suppose he means Reggie Weasley! As if _he_ knows anything about us—or anything about anything!"

Professor Parandrus frowned like the mask of tragedy. "If Weasley has been spreading scandalous stories, Orphrey, he has been very wicked; and you have been very foolish to listen to him. Perhaps hot irons—"

"No, sir, it was not Mr. Weasley. As Miss Zernebock points out, how could _he_ know anything about Ravenclaw House?"

"Then who has been, er, telling tales out of school?"

"I had really rather not say, sir."

"Speak up, Orphrey, or I shall be forced to punish the whole House!"

Aurelian thoughtfully removed his eyeglass, polished it deliberately with a clean white cloth from his sleeve, returned the cloth carefully to his sleeve and the glass to his eye, and answered:

"Urfried Zernebock."

PART IV.

_Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people._  
— SAKI, _Reginald at the Carlton_

"Nonsense!" hissed Urfried Zernebock.

"Rot!" spat Angela Britomart.

"Tosh!" shrilled the Ravenclaws generally.

Professor Parandrus, displaying a fine and wholly fictitious impartiality, seemed inclined to side with the rival House. "I do not, er, credit your statement for one moment, wretched boy!" he pronounced.

"Do you not, sir?" replied Aurelian, unruffled. "And yet it is susceptible of proof. You may ask anyone who was in the Library last night whether or not they saw me and Miss Zernebock talking together there—or rather," he said, with the air of one hastily correcting himself, "they saw Miss Zernebock talking to me, for I am, as you know, sir, not a man of many words."

"That's right!" gasped a Gryffindor Third Year. "I saw them together myself!"

"And so did I!"

"And I!"

It rapidly appeared that a good three-fifths of the students of Hogwarts had witnessed the _rencontre_ between the Ravenclaw and the Gryffindor.

"_I_ wondered why Aurelian was actually listening to her," exploded a Hufflepuff, with typical Hufflepuff reticence, "and whether she might actually be saying something worth hearing for a change!"

"You fools," trumpeted Urfried, "That wasn't Aurelian—that was Angela, in the form of Aurelian!!"

"Alas, no!" replied Aurelian, with a pensive sigh, "I'm afraid that was myself, Transfigured into Angela. I'm very sorry to have taken the liberty, Miss Britomart, but I hoped it would cheer my friend Mr. Weasley up if he were to see you reading the _Lion's Hearts_ series of novelettes. Miss Zernebock will recall that I told her I had got them for a friend."

"Oh, please!" snapped Angela, "Not even Reggie Weasley could have been be idiotic enough to believe that!"

"Here, I say!" protested Reggie.

"But—but—" spluttered Urfried, "I heard you deepening your voice!"

"Of course. Miss Britomart needn't have bothered, as she is a Polymagus, and her voice would change naturally. What more could I have done to prove I was not she?"

Angela rounded on Urfried. "You thought that I would appear publicly as that carroty-maned wizardly blight? Really, Urfried, have you the brains of a Billywig?"

"No, no," stammered Urfried, seeing her intellectual reputation deflating like a smitten soufflé and hoping to snatch something from the wreck, "Of course I knew it was Aurelian, really."

"Of course," purred Aurelian, like a lion watching a particularly fat zebu stumble and break its leg, "which was why I was astonished when you, of all people, told me that Loola Quirke has to use Pustul-Go for her spots every night…"

A shriek burst forth from the scrofulous Loola.

"…and that Rupert Nethersole's mother's 'secret mission for the Department of Mysteries' was to run off with a Muggle eel-fisher…"

A bellow from Rupert.

"…and that Conradin Figg's 'Ollivander' wand was a cheap Brummagem copy, and Marcella Tyrwhitt made herself sick on prawns at the House dinner, and Cambina Pennyfeather's Uncle Max was a 'permanent guest' at St. Mungo's because he thinks he's a Muggle pillar-box and tries to eat every letter the Owls deliver—"

Professor Parandrus burst into a bleat, "That's quite enough, Orphrey!"

"…and do you know, sir, she even told me about Angela, that her parents were so afraid that she would turn out a Squib, that they hired a special 'Idiot Teacher'—"

If Urfried Zernebock had rather a stricken appearance at this moment, it was perhaps not unconnected with the fact that Angela had struck her—several times, in fact—and was now industriously engaged in pulling her hair out by its suspiciously sandy roots. Urfried responded, as the mandrake in similar situations, with such piercing shrieks that living mortals hearing them ran mad, mostly for their Brownies. Among the Ravenclaws wands were drawn with greater abandon than in an artists' colony in Chelsea.

It was, perhaps, grossly unfair that Rose St. Cyprian should have received a detention for Reggie Weasley's Transfiguration into a bat, which entangled itself with great foresight in her hair and caused her to upset the high table. Doubtless it was having to spend an entire week with Reggie that caused her on expiration of that term to Transfigure him into an Acromantula, which proceeded to hang young Clodius Malfoy by his heels from the ceiling of the Potions classroom. She would have done well to restrain her indignation, which did but gain her another week alone with the red-haired ruffian. As Aurelian remarked, "Dret the gal—ye'd almost think she done it a-puppus."

Urfried has been fortunate in that Durmstrang has proven willing to take her in the middle of Term.

FINIS.


End file.
